Young, Robbie C.; Robinson, James

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ORAL HISTORY OF ROBBIE C. YOUNG AND JAMES ROBINSON
Interviewed and Filmed by Chris Albrecht
Significant Productions
March 31, 2006
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
MR. ALBRECHT: How old were you when you first came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. YOUNG: I came to Oak Ridge, 9 years old, a month before my 10th birthday.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where were you living before?
MRS. YOUNG: My daddy and I have a conflict with that. I lived in the hut with my mother.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where did you live before you came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. YOUNG: I lived in Mississippi with my grandmother.
MR. ALBRECHT: How did you feel about being left with your grandmother when your parents came here?
MRS. YOUNG: At that time, no thought because I enjoyed being with the family.
MR. ALBRECHT: You say you lived in the hut with your mother, tell me what you recall about that.
MRS. YOUNG: I recall there were beds in each corner of the hutment and a potbelly stove in the center of the hutment. I don’t remember as he did as far as going to the mess hall to eat, I can’t remember all that. But I sure didn’t starve.
MR. ALBRECHT: What was it like for a child here at that time? Was there a school that you went to?
MRS. YOUNG: There was no school for the Blacks. We had to go to Green Macadoo in Clinton. I recall sort of where the, it was a limousine that came to pick us up. The memory for me was a limousine coming to pick us up and there is a cemetery going down Illinois [Avenue] right across from, McDonalds is a little further down, but back this way from McDonalds going into it. There is a clump of trees and the limousine would come down by the cemetery, whirl around under the trees, and pick up the other students. There was a Williams family, and myself. Those are the only ones that I can remember at that time.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Tell me, what do you remember about the work that your mother or your father did?
MRS. YOUNG: The work that they did I cannot answer to that. They were going to work as I was going to school.
MR. ALBRECHT: They didn’t talk about what they were doing on the job?
MRS. YOUNG: No.
MR. ALBRECHT: You say your mother worked…
MRS. YOUNG: At K-25 for a short time. Then she gave birth to my brother. So, she didn’t go back.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did you live in the hut with your mother before you all could live as a family? And where did you live as a family then?
MRS. YOUNG: I cannot remember that totally, but I know when my brother was born we were in the flattops. And the flattops wasn’t much bigger than the hut. It was a two family place. One on one side and one on the other.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long were you in the flattop, or were you there for a long time?
MRS. YOUNG: Memories will not allow me to come up with that, but I can tell you some of the memory of living there. One thing in living in the flattops and when we didn’t have to go to Green Macadoo, we went to the old Scarboro School. I don’t know what company has it now, but it’s in going to X-10, you’re going to make that right, but you’re going to go straight to that building that is there. That was our first school in Oak Ridge. They called it the Scarboro School. And in later years, they had the last Scarboro School that was torn down in the area where we live now, where I live, well, where he lived, too. Some of my activity was Girl Scouting. Mrs. Teasely was the scout leader at that time. And the area, I know you’re not asking me all this, but I am saying it. The area, according to my memory of where we were living, where the old post office is there by Belk now, the flattops were in that area and that community center was down from where we lived. This is where we went and the Girl Scouts were to go out scouting that night and it poured down rain. So we camped in the community center. At that time, 15 and I was one of the first black girl scouts.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now, as a child living in Oak Ridge, did you have to wear an I.D. badge?
MRS. YOUNG: Oh, sure! I have my memory of that. I was taking music lessons in Knoxville and I wasn’t old enough to just really have to have a badge or whatever. So I was on the bus. When we got to Solway Bridge, there was a gate, they took me off the bus because they didn’t believe that I was as young as I was, but I knew the direction to where to get off. But my parents had to get me. So that was my first experience with having to have a pass or whatever to get through the gate.
MR. ALBRECHT: Different kind of life, huh?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: What do you recall from the time that you arrived at Oak Ridge, what do you recall about segregation, what do you remember being in place as far as separate drinking fountains and restrooms, dining halls. That type of thing.
MRS. YOUNG: My memory, I can’t say all Oak Ridge, but all I can ever see was colored, colored, colored. So, that was the main thing I saw.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Tell me a little bit about, if you can recall, you were young then of course, you were living with your grandmother and then all of a sudden you got word that you were going to be able to rejoin your mother and father. Tell me a little bit about that if you can recall.
MRS. YOUNG: In living with my grandmother, I eventually went to live with my aunt in Memphis. But in living with my grandmother I went to school with an aunt, so that was fine. Living with my aunt in Memphis I also went to a Catholic school. So, I remember some of the procedures in the Catholic school where we had to go to mass in the morning. And in coming to, I just can’t remember totally. I remember my dad being at the bus station and we’re getting on the bus, and we’re waiting for buses, transferring to buses, and getting to Oak Ridge to see my mother. That’s about as much as I can recall of that.
MR. ALBRECHT: What do you recall about the war ending; they announced publicly what had been accomplished here in Oak Ridge. What are your memories of that? Do you think about the magnitude of all that?
MRS. YOUNG: The war ending, I must have been young. I don’t recall it.
MR. ALBRECHT: When did it first sink in, when did you realize that the Manhattan Project was all about the atomic bomb and so forth.
MRS. YOUNG: I guess as I grew older. This was when we sort of learned that there was something secretive, especially if you had to have badges, and passes and all to get in and out.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, that all started to make sense then?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes, it did.
MR. ALBRECHT: You came here when you were 10; the war was over at that point.
MRS. YOUNG: I came here a month before my 10th birthday.
MR. ALBRECHT: But the war was over by that point, that’s why the let families in.
MRS. YOUNG: I suppose. I’m not sure.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay.
MRS. YOUNG: But I do recall in being here. When there was a, oh gosh, my thoughts are not there totally, but I can tell you what it is. Standing in line to get sugar, flour, meal, lard, I guess they called it. I recall standing in line so that we could get some of these items to have to eat.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did, and you’re talking about the rationing?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you have rationing books?
MRS. YOUNG: I can’t remember, but I do know that they asked, we apparently had to have something to be in line but I was able to be one of them to stand in line.
MR. ALBRECHT: When you were a child and you were going to school here, are many of your childhood friends still in the Oak Ridge area? Did many of them stay?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes. Some of them ended up in Knoxville and some of them in Clinton. And some are farther away. Every now and then I run into one that let me know how some of those that are far away are doing. They hear from them and let me know that they are doing okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: So some of them did perhaps go back to Mississippi or Alabama, Georgia…
MRS. YOUNG: Right. Or farther.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where do you recall people being from during that time?
MRS. YOUNG: Being from?
MR. ALBRECHT: Yeah.
MRS. YOUNG: I don’t think we even conversed about that.
MR. ALBRECHT: This was home and it didn’t matter where the person came from.
MRS. YOUNG: Right.
MR. ALBRECHT: Interesting. Interesting. What other thoughts do you have; what other stories might you have? We’ve talked about some things, I don’t know if that has made you think of things that would be appropriate.
MRS. YOUNG: Other things? I just know that the city is a home that breaks the monotony of not being able to sit at the counters, or go to the same bathrooms, all that was going on. During the time, I guess after I married, and my children, is when the break came. I can’t remember a lot of it because. As my dad said, he didn’t go anywhere, we stayed home. He didn’t take me to a lot of places. So there are a lot of places I wasn’t totally familiar with. But the break came later.
MR. ALBRECHT: What do you recall about those days?
MRS. YOUNG: For me, I was not really going out, or my parents didn’t take me to go out, and sit at the counters to eat or to drink, so I guess it wasn’t a botheration to me. I just knew it was going on.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Well, I’m going to turn the camera off at this point.
[Break in Tape]
MRS. YOUNG: …and I saw a check stub 50 some dollars. Compared to now with labor, you get more. And he was working long hours. Well, he was having a little taken, that was what the net pay, he was having a little taken out here, little there, but for him to bring home 50 some dollars. I thought, and I showed it to the kids, my children were with me at that time, and they looked at it and, “Papaw has done all this”. They realized what he did was working and saving, working and saving. My heart aches now that he got sick. In all that he paid for a house, his saving and it all has been taken from him. But we just thank God, at 97, he’s still here with us.
MR. ALBRECHT: You’re blessed.
MRS. YOUNG: Totally blessed. Totally blessed. So I don’t want to harbor any, any, any ills toward anyone. I want them to treat me just as I would treat them, regardless of the race.
MR. ALBRECHT: Amen. That was good. I turned the camera back on and got most of that because that’s talking about the amount of money and so forth. Those are things that help paint the picture. It’s so difficult for people to understand how the wages were.
MRS. YOUNG: It was. We were amazed at seeing the check stubs. I don’t know if they saved any of them or not. My son had power of attorney over his affairs. Everything I found I would put it in a bag and give it to him. Whether he saved any of it or not, just one, so you can look back and see.
MR. ALBRECHT: It’s a window in history. It’s the real thing.
MRS. YOUNG: Right.
MR. ALBRECHT: If you do find anything like that, paystubs or anything that relates to that period, if you wouldn’t mind setting it aside, that is something I would like the opportunity to scan, that we could actually use. That and photographs.
MRS. YOUNG: Oh, boy. Jimmy has moved several times. I hope he didn’t throw a lot of the stuff away.
MR. ALBRECHT: Like I said, if something appears, please set it aside because we would like to have the opportunity to use that. Just to show, those are powerful things.
MRS. YOUNG: Exactly. Exactly.
MR. ALBRECHT: You can hear someone talking about it, but when you actually see it, that’s an eye opener.
MRS. YOUNG: What is it? A horse of another color.
MR. ALBRECHT: Absolutely. One other thing I…
[Break in Tape]
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Or it may be better to wait until we can talk to him.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’m ready whenever you want to try.
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Does…
MR. ALBRECHT: I think the microphone is sitting right there will probably pick it up fine.
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Hey Papa, you know what you have said to me? And I have been amazed at it. You remember your badge number. Can you still remember your badge number?
MR. ROBINSON: Can I remember my badge number?
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Yes.
MR. ROBINSON: Yeah. I can remember. 17-1-34.
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: I can’t remember yesterday and you remember that.
MR. ROBINSON: You can’t remember what?
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Yesterday. It’s a blessing you remember. 17-1-34, he said.
MR. ALBRECHT: Got it.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF ROBBIE C. YOUNG AND JAMES ROBINSON
Interviewed and Filmed by Chris Albrecht
Significant Productions
March 31, 2006
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
MR. ALBRECHT: How old were you when you first came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. YOUNG: I came to Oak Ridge, 9 years old, a month before my 10th birthday.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where were you living before?
MRS. YOUNG: My daddy and I have a conflict with that. I lived in the hut with my mother.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where did you live before you came to Oak Ridge?
MRS. YOUNG: I lived in Mississippi with my grandmother.
MR. ALBRECHT: How did you feel about being left with your grandmother when your parents came here?
MRS. YOUNG: At that time, no thought because I enjoyed being with the family.
MR. ALBRECHT: You say you lived in the hut with your mother, tell me what you recall about that.
MRS. YOUNG: I recall there were beds in each corner of the hutment and a potbelly stove in the center of the hutment. I don’t remember as he did as far as going to the mess hall to eat, I can’t remember all that. But I sure didn’t starve.
MR. ALBRECHT: What was it like for a child here at that time? Was there a school that you went to?
MRS. YOUNG: There was no school for the Blacks. We had to go to Green Macadoo in Clinton. I recall sort of where the, it was a limousine that came to pick us up. The memory for me was a limousine coming to pick us up and there is a cemetery going down Illinois [Avenue] right across from, McDonalds is a little further down, but back this way from McDonalds going into it. There is a clump of trees and the limousine would come down by the cemetery, whirl around under the trees, and pick up the other students. There was a Williams family, and myself. Those are the only ones that I can remember at that time.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Tell me, what do you remember about the work that your mother or your father did?
MRS. YOUNG: The work that they did I cannot answer to that. They were going to work as I was going to school.
MR. ALBRECHT: They didn’t talk about what they were doing on the job?
MRS. YOUNG: No.
MR. ALBRECHT: You say your mother worked…
MRS. YOUNG: At K-25 for a short time. Then she gave birth to my brother. So, she didn’t go back.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did you live in the hut with your mother before you all could live as a family? And where did you live as a family then?
MRS. YOUNG: I cannot remember that totally, but I know when my brother was born we were in the flattops. And the flattops wasn’t much bigger than the hut. It was a two family place. One on one side and one on the other.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long were you in the flattop, or were you there for a long time?
MRS. YOUNG: Memories will not allow me to come up with that, but I can tell you some of the memory of living there. One thing in living in the flattops and when we didn’t have to go to Green Macadoo, we went to the old Scarboro School. I don’t know what company has it now, but it’s in going to X-10, you’re going to make that right, but you’re going to go straight to that building that is there. That was our first school in Oak Ridge. They called it the Scarboro School. And in later years, they had the last Scarboro School that was torn down in the area where we live now, where I live, well, where he lived, too. Some of my activity was Girl Scouting. Mrs. Teasely was the scout leader at that time. And the area, I know you’re not asking me all this, but I am saying it. The area, according to my memory of where we were living, where the old post office is there by Belk now, the flattops were in that area and that community center was down from where we lived. This is where we went and the Girl Scouts were to go out scouting that night and it poured down rain. So we camped in the community center. At that time, 15 and I was one of the first black girl scouts.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now, as a child living in Oak Ridge, did you have to wear an I.D. badge?
MRS. YOUNG: Oh, sure! I have my memory of that. I was taking music lessons in Knoxville and I wasn’t old enough to just really have to have a badge or whatever. So I was on the bus. When we got to Solway Bridge, there was a gate, they took me off the bus because they didn’t believe that I was as young as I was, but I knew the direction to where to get off. But my parents had to get me. So that was my first experience with having to have a pass or whatever to get through the gate.
MR. ALBRECHT: Different kind of life, huh?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: What do you recall from the time that you arrived at Oak Ridge, what do you recall about segregation, what do you remember being in place as far as separate drinking fountains and restrooms, dining halls. That type of thing.
MRS. YOUNG: My memory, I can’t say all Oak Ridge, but all I can ever see was colored, colored, colored. So, that was the main thing I saw.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Tell me a little bit about, if you can recall, you were young then of course, you were living with your grandmother and then all of a sudden you got word that you were going to be able to rejoin your mother and father. Tell me a little bit about that if you can recall.
MRS. YOUNG: In living with my grandmother, I eventually went to live with my aunt in Memphis. But in living with my grandmother I went to school with an aunt, so that was fine. Living with my aunt in Memphis I also went to a Catholic school. So, I remember some of the procedures in the Catholic school where we had to go to mass in the morning. And in coming to, I just can’t remember totally. I remember my dad being at the bus station and we’re getting on the bus, and we’re waiting for buses, transferring to buses, and getting to Oak Ridge to see my mother. That’s about as much as I can recall of that.
MR. ALBRECHT: What do you recall about the war ending; they announced publicly what had been accomplished here in Oak Ridge. What are your memories of that? Do you think about the magnitude of all that?
MRS. YOUNG: The war ending, I must have been young. I don’t recall it.
MR. ALBRECHT: When did it first sink in, when did you realize that the Manhattan Project was all about the atomic bomb and so forth.
MRS. YOUNG: I guess as I grew older. This was when we sort of learned that there was something secretive, especially if you had to have badges, and passes and all to get in and out.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, that all started to make sense then?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes, it did.
MR. ALBRECHT: You came here when you were 10; the war was over at that point.
MRS. YOUNG: I came here a month before my 10th birthday.
MR. ALBRECHT: But the war was over by that point, that’s why the let families in.
MRS. YOUNG: I suppose. I’m not sure.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay.
MRS. YOUNG: But I do recall in being here. When there was a, oh gosh, my thoughts are not there totally, but I can tell you what it is. Standing in line to get sugar, flour, meal, lard, I guess they called it. I recall standing in line so that we could get some of these items to have to eat.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did, and you’re talking about the rationing?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you have rationing books?
MRS. YOUNG: I can’t remember, but I do know that they asked, we apparently had to have something to be in line but I was able to be one of them to stand in line.
MR. ALBRECHT: When you were a child and you were going to school here, are many of your childhood friends still in the Oak Ridge area? Did many of them stay?
MRS. YOUNG: Yes. Some of them ended up in Knoxville and some of them in Clinton. And some are farther away. Every now and then I run into one that let me know how some of those that are far away are doing. They hear from them and let me know that they are doing okay.
MR. ALBRECHT: So some of them did perhaps go back to Mississippi or Alabama, Georgia…
MRS. YOUNG: Right. Or farther.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where do you recall people being from during that time?
MRS. YOUNG: Being from?
MR. ALBRECHT: Yeah.
MRS. YOUNG: I don’t think we even conversed about that.
MR. ALBRECHT: This was home and it didn’t matter where the person came from.
MRS. YOUNG: Right.
MR. ALBRECHT: Interesting. Interesting. What other thoughts do you have; what other stories might you have? We’ve talked about some things, I don’t know if that has made you think of things that would be appropriate.
MRS. YOUNG: Other things? I just know that the city is a home that breaks the monotony of not being able to sit at the counters, or go to the same bathrooms, all that was going on. During the time, I guess after I married, and my children, is when the break came. I can’t remember a lot of it because. As my dad said, he didn’t go anywhere, we stayed home. He didn’t take me to a lot of places. So there are a lot of places I wasn’t totally familiar with. But the break came later.
MR. ALBRECHT: What do you recall about those days?
MRS. YOUNG: For me, I was not really going out, or my parents didn’t take me to go out, and sit at the counters to eat or to drink, so I guess it wasn’t a botheration to me. I just knew it was going on.
MR. ALBRECHT: Okay. Well, I’m going to turn the camera off at this point.
[Break in Tape]
MRS. YOUNG: …and I saw a check stub 50 some dollars. Compared to now with labor, you get more. And he was working long hours. Well, he was having a little taken, that was what the net pay, he was having a little taken out here, little there, but for him to bring home 50 some dollars. I thought, and I showed it to the kids, my children were with me at that time, and they looked at it and, “Papaw has done all this”. They realized what he did was working and saving, working and saving. My heart aches now that he got sick. In all that he paid for a house, his saving and it all has been taken from him. But we just thank God, at 97, he’s still here with us.
MR. ALBRECHT: You’re blessed.
MRS. YOUNG: Totally blessed. Totally blessed. So I don’t want to harbor any, any, any ills toward anyone. I want them to treat me just as I would treat them, regardless of the race.
MR. ALBRECHT: Amen. That was good. I turned the camera back on and got most of that because that’s talking about the amount of money and so forth. Those are things that help paint the picture. It’s so difficult for people to understand how the wages were.
MRS. YOUNG: It was. We were amazed at seeing the check stubs. I don’t know if they saved any of them or not. My son had power of attorney over his affairs. Everything I found I would put it in a bag and give it to him. Whether he saved any of it or not, just one, so you can look back and see.
MR. ALBRECHT: It’s a window in history. It’s the real thing.
MRS. YOUNG: Right.
MR. ALBRECHT: If you do find anything like that, paystubs or anything that relates to that period, if you wouldn’t mind setting it aside, that is something I would like the opportunity to scan, that we could actually use. That and photographs.
MRS. YOUNG: Oh, boy. Jimmy has moved several times. I hope he didn’t throw a lot of the stuff away.
MR. ALBRECHT: Like I said, if something appears, please set it aside because we would like to have the opportunity to use that. Just to show, those are powerful things.
MRS. YOUNG: Exactly. Exactly.
MR. ALBRECHT: You can hear someone talking about it, but when you actually see it, that’s an eye opener.
MRS. YOUNG: What is it? A horse of another color.
MR. ALBRECHT: Absolutely. One other thing I…
[Break in Tape]
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Or it may be better to wait until we can talk to him.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’m ready whenever you want to try.
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Does…
MR. ALBRECHT: I think the microphone is sitting right there will probably pick it up fine.
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Hey Papa, you know what you have said to me? And I have been amazed at it. You remember your badge number. Can you still remember your badge number?
MR. ROBINSON: Can I remember my badge number?
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Yes.
MR. ROBINSON: Yeah. I can remember. 17-1-34.
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: I can’t remember yesterday and you remember that.
MR. ROBINSON: You can’t remember what?
MRS. YOUNG [off camera]: Yesterday. It’s a blessing you remember. 17-1-34, he said.
MR. ALBRECHT: Got it.
[End of Interview]